NEW YORK – Guardant Health and Chinese clinical laboratory firm Adicon said on Wednesday that they have signed a strategic partnership under which Adicon has licensed Guardant's tissue and blood-based genomic cancer assays, which it will now be able to offer to biopharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials in China.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The deal includes Guardant's liquid biopsy assays Guardant360 and GuardantOmni, the more recently launched Guardant360 TissueNext, and the firm's minimal residual disease test Guardant Reveal.
According to Adicon CFO Lawrence Wang, cancer has become a higher priority in China in recent years due to increasing incidence rates. "With our CAP-accredited laboratory in Shanghai, we are delighted to partner with Guardant Health to make its cancer tests available for biopharmaceutical partners," he said in a statement.
The firms said that more than 4.5 million people in China were diagnosed with cancer in 2020, and 3 million died from the disease, making it the leading cause of death in the country.